The Jennings High Continuum

by Anne Hendricks

Beth Reeder hated the word infocalypse. Now, in 2025, retired from her 25 years as a librarian, she read the headline that confirmed its reality:

Billionaire Joe Rafferty Unveils Chronos Shunt, Vows to ‘Reset’ History

Joe — her brilliant former student from Jennings High in Liddon, Mississippi — was the architect of the end. The article quoted him, citing the inspiration for his time-travel “widget” as the library research where Mrs. Reeder taught him information was “limitless, easily accessible, and, most importantly, objective.”

“Objective,” Beth whispered, shaking her head. “That was the mistake.”

In the 90s, she had championed every new technology as a neutral solution, trading the slowness of critical appraisal for the speed of digital access. She had unwittingly trained a generation — and Joe in particular — to view information as a purely quantifiable resource, detached from ethical friction. Joe’s Chronos Shunt was the literal consequence of that unchecked technological hubris.

She failed to contact him. His digital fortress was impenetrable.

But Beth was a librarian — a finder of loopholes.

She located a leaked schematic detailing the Master Synchronization Node (MSN) for his alpha tests: Anchor JHS/Liddon.

Joe, in his sentimentality, had disguised the nexus point in the old Jennings High server room. Digging out a discarded 1990s-era fiber-optic patch cable from her basement, she knew how to inject herself into the entanglement field.

At 11:30 PM, Beth drove back to the high school. She found the server rack humming in the dark library. After plugging the cable into the diagnostic port, she pressed the fiber-optic tip against her wrist. The server instantly registered the connection.

Temporal Entanglement Field initializing…

The air filled with ozone, and a blinding blue-white light erupted, swallowing her as she focused on the target:

1995. The mistake. Joe Rafferty, age 15.

The transition was violent — a wrenching tear through time. She landed on the cheap gray carpet of the computer lab. The air smelled of dust and old paper. Across the room, bathed in the harsh glow of the single internet terminal, sat Young Joe Rafferty. Ten feet away, at the circulation desk, sat her younger self, Age 27, flipping through a catalog for new CD-ROM systems.

Older Beth approached her younger self first, blocking her view of the server room.

“A security audit,” she rasped. “Emergency stability check.”

Young Beth was skeptical but alarmed. “What’s the risk?”

“The pursuit of speed over wisdom,” Older Beth stated, gripping her arm. “You are about to champion every new tech as a solution, failing to teach that convenience is not synonymous with quality. You are trading slow, careful appraisal for the instantaneous answer. This is a quiet catastrophe. You will train Joe over there to believe knowledge is purely objective, setting the stage for him to believe he is informed enough to literally change history.”

Young Beth’s eyes widened with terror. “What do I do?”

“Teach them to doubt — not just to search,” Older Beth pleaded. “You must treat every piece of technology not as a solution, but as a challenge. You must keep the friction of knowledge alive. Do not let technology become a surrogate for wisdom.”

Older Beth then turned to Joe, who was now staring at her.

“I know what you’re doing, Joe. You want the knowledge that lets you fix the universe. And thirty years from now, you create the machine that causes the infocalypse because you mistake information for wisdom.”

Joe scoffed. “Knowledge is power. The more data I have, the better my solution.”

“Knowledge is a tool, but it can be a scalpel or a sword,” she countered, leaning in. “The greatest lie I ever taught you was that information is objective. The minute it is compiled or filtered, it is framed. You must recognize that the network rewards narrow focus. You must spend as much time grappling with ethics as you do with equations.”

A high-pitched whine began to pulse from the server room. Her temporal anchor was collapsing.

“I have to go,” Older Beth said, turning.

Young Beth rushed forward. “What happens to you?”

“If I succeed, this timeline — this moment — will never exist,” she said. “I am sacrificing the comfortable convenience of my retirement for the wisdom of your service.”

She slammed the fiber cable back into the diagnostic port, shouting over the blinding light:

“Don’t chase the solutions! Chase the responsibility!”

The light vanished.

Beth Reeder opened her eyes.

She was sitting at a large desk in a tidy library office. The date on the computer screen read: November 5, 2025. She was not retired. The timeline had shifted.

A man in a corduroy jacket stood at the doorway holding a stack of papers.

“Mrs. Reeder? Just wanted to leave these.”

It was Joe Rafferty — not a tech billionaire, but a professor.

“The final drafts for my new textbook,” he said, smiling easily. “It’s on applied quantum ethics. Remember that conversation we had back in ’95? About knowledge and hesitation?”

Beth felt a rush of tears.

Her younger self had listened. The Chronos Shunt had never been invented.

Joe placed a library card on the desk.

Profession: Educator.

Beth leaned back.
The silence of the library was safe.